“Are you waiting for a taxi?”
Dougal had been aware of the man who’d come to stand next to him in front of the hopeless air conditioner. He’d even shifted a little to the side so the man could also get some dusty, coolish air. The slender, bespectacled man had placed his briefcase on the floor between them. Dougal remembered him from the flight. They had shared the first-class cabin with just two other passengers: a black girl who looked too young to be traveling alone, and a slightly stooped white man who wore a dark suit and kept asking for more champagne. He was also standing by the glass pane now, the stooped white man, within earshot, looking out for his driver, perhaps, or maybe he was a sheep, instinctively sticking close to the one person who looked like him. They were about the same height. One could even say they looked alike. Somewhat.
“Are you waiting to be picked up?” the black man asked.
“I think that lad there is mine,” Dougal said. He pointed at the man with the name card. The stooped man seemed to be listening.
“I see. Erm, listen, I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation on the flight. Before we took off. You were talking to someone on the phone.”
“Yes.” Dougal took a more careful look at the man. On the aircraft, he had been reading a copy of the Financial Times before he pulled out a computer and worked on what looked like spreadsheets. He had also declined the champagne and didn’t have any alcohol with his meal — unlike the stooped man who couldn’t have enough of the stuff.
“Again, I must apologize,” the black man said, “but from what I heard, it sounds like you are being swindled.”
“What do you mean?”
The man looked at the officer, whose head was bent to his phone. “Someone you’ve never met invited you to do some business with him, yes?”
He was taller than Dougal, who took a step back and took him all in.
The man continued, “They paid for your flight, booked you a hotel, and maybe even sent you some money?”
Dougal nodded. “They sent money; Western Union.”
The man smiled and shook his head. “And this business, whatever it is, you stand to make a lot of money from it, yes?”
Dougal nodded.
“Without spending a lot of your own money?”
Dougal stared at him.
“Or none of your own money,” the man went on.
Dougal searched his pockets for his cigarettes.
“If you don’t mind me asking, what is this business? They told you they are in possession of some millions of pounds and they need an account to keep it in?” He searched Dougal’s face. “They said they are related to a former head of state and they need to get his assets out of the country?”
Dougal looked outside, at the man holding up his name.
“They said you inherited some millions from a relative who died in Nigeria?”
“Yes, my uncle. He moved to Nigeria in the sixties. He married a Nigerian woman.”
The man chuckled. “And he left you a lot of millions, right?”
“They said they’d been looking for me for some time.”
The man bent over with laughter and gripped Dougal’s arm as if to stop himself from hitting the ground. A gold Rolex peeped out from under his sleeve. His grip was tight.
Dougal thought of Betsy. He still had the five thousand pounds, anyway. He would take her on holiday to Mabaya. That would sort her. “What should I do?”
With the back of his hand, the man cleaned tears from his eyes. “Dugal, right?”
Dougal pronounced his name properly for him.
“See, the only reason I came to talk to you is because I saw you standing here, having second thoughts, I assume. Let me ask you something — are you a rich man?”
“No, I’m a schoolteacher.”
“What about this uncle of yours, was he rich?”
Dougal shook his head. “He ran a bar.”
The man tried, but couldn’t talk and laugh at the same time, so he turned his face from Dougal and bent over laughing again, holding his belly with both his arms. Dougal looked around. A few people glanced at them. The policeman looked up briefly and then continued with his game.
“My friend, there is no money and no Uncle Sam,” the man said after he managed to straighten back up. “It was probably a lucky guess that you happened to have a relative in Nigeria. Did you even know the man?”
“No.”
“And they know you are not rich?”
“What?”
“The people who invited you. They know you are a schoolteacher, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Do they know what you look like?”
“No. They asked me to wear this.” Dougal held his arms out. His eyes went to the blue stain.
“A white suit is strange in Nigeria.”
“Yes.”
“So they don’t know what you look like. Thank God for that.”
“Why? What are you getting at, anyway? Who are you?”
“I will tell you who I am in a minute. First, like I said, I got suspicious when I overheard your conversation on the plane. You see that man out there? He is here to kidnap you.”
A loud gong went off in Dougal’s head. He looked at the man outside and his body felt weak from the furious beating of his heart. Betsy was right. It felt as if she was standing next to him, rebuking, mocking him with her silence. Her unspoken I told you so permanently etching itself into one of the wrinkles under her eyes. What a fool he’d been. But they sent him money. He still had some of it. They sent him money, and they knew his uncle. They even knew he was his mother’s half brother from her first marriage to an Irish miner. How could they know all those things? He’d asked, just to be sure, and after a couple of days, Okonkwo — Chief Earnest — called and said the tattoo was of a bird in flight. A dove on the departed relative’s shoulder. How could they have found that out if they didn’t know the man? They could have dug up his grave. He shuddered. But who would go to that extent just to lure a schoolteacher to Lagos to be kidnapped? Who would they demand ransom from? Betsy?
“They’re going to kidnap me?”
“Yes. He will kidnap you and your family will pay them ransom to release you.”
“But...”
“But what? You people make me angry. You have never been to Nigeria, maybe you don’t even know any Nigerians, and some stranger calls you and says come to Nigeria to collect some millions you didn’t work for, and you come. Next thing, you get kidnapped and they’ll be saying Nigerians are bad, Nigerians are this, Nigerians are that. I have a mind to arrest you for conspiracy to defame Nigeria.”
“What?”
The man reached into his breast pocket and pulled out an ID card. He held it up to Dougal’s face. “I am a director of the anticorruption agency here.”
The police officer hopped from his stool and stood to attention. His phone sang away in his clenched fist as his eyes darted back and forth between the men standing before him.
Dougal could see it now: Betsy receiving the call. They would put him on to let her know it was no joke, then they’d warn her not to call the police. She would tell them how they had no money. They would tell her to sell the house or take a loan on it. They’d probably already planned everything. The money they sent, the cost of the flight, it was all just an investment. Betsy would take out the loan, she wouldn’t call the police, and the kidnappers would get their money. It was all so sophisticated.